Chen, Huey T.

Huey T. Chen

Professor and Director, Center for Evaluation and Applied Research

Dr. Chen is Professor of Public Health and Director of the Center for Evaluation and Applied Research in the College of Health Professions. He joined Mercer University in 2013.

He earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Bachelor of Sociology degree from National Chung University Taipei, Taiwan.

Dr. Chen has extensive experience in public health and program evaluation working with community organizations, health agencies, government agencies, and educational institutions. His experience include: serving as branch chief and senior evaluation scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), evaluating large and small scale programs in US and internationally (e.g. a drug abuse treatment program and a youth service program in Ohio, a carbon monoxide ordinance in North Carolina, a community health initiative in New Jersey, a juvenile delinquency prevention and treatment policy in Taiwan, an HIV prevention and care initiative in China, an antismoking program in Georgia, a prenatal care program in South Carolina, and a telemedicine program in Georgia).

Dr. Chen teaches Introductory and Advanced Evaluation. Prior to joining Mercer he was a Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Dr. Chen wrote extensively on program theory, theory-driven evaluation, the bottom-up evaluation approach, and the integrated evaluation perspective. In addition to publishing over 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals, he is the author of several evaluation books. His book Theory-Driven Evaluations (1990, SAGE) is considered a landmark in program evaluation. His book Practical Program Evaluation: Theory-Driven Evaluation and the Integrated Evaluation Perspective, Second Edition (2015, SAGE) introduced cutting-edge evaluation approaches illustrating the benefits of thinking outside the proverbial box.

Dr. Chen is a member of the American Evaluation Association and serves on the editorial advisory boards of Evaluation and Program Planning. He won the American Evaluation Association’s Lazarsfeld Award for the Evaluation Theory in 1993, and the Senior Biomedical Service Award from the CDC for his evaluation work.